Justin's "which are called Gospels": interpolation?

[Ulan]

BTW my use of foursome did not mean to imply all four Gospels. It was more meant "our Gospels", not some other hypothetical Gospels that hypothetically have been lost.

We can exclude this hypothesis of "our gospels" only, as we have seen from the only time that Justin actually quoted something from a gospel that he himself identified as "written", which was from the "Gospel" of Marcion (which, incidentally, bore just the title "The Gospel" without identifier). He also quotes from what we know as the Gospel of James.

The latter is basically the reason why the Christian churches still celebrate a cave as Jesus' birthplace.

[gmx]

We can exclude this hypothesis of "our gospels" only, as we have seen from the only time that Justin actually quoted something from a gospel that he himself identified as "written", which was from the "Gospel" of Marcion

Simply untrue, Ulan. Justin says...

And when it is said that he changed the name of one of the apostles to Peter; and when it is written in the memoirs of him that this so happened, as well as that he changed the names of other two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means sons of thunder

Justin is explicitly talking about a written source. He calls out the memoirs, and following from Peter Kirby's earlier response, we're assuming "memoirs ... which are called gospels" is genuine. Furthermore, Justin is quite possibly referring explicitly to the memoirs of Peter. Interesting then that the passage referenced is Mark 3:16-17 (present in Mark's gospel alone), which is of course the gospel traditionally ascribed to Peter.

And we're back at the OP question...

[Ulan]

We can exclude this hypothesis of "our gospels" only, as we have seen from the only time that Justin actually quoted something from a gospel that he himself identified as "written", which was from the "Gospel" of Marcion

Simply untrue, Ulan. Justin says...

I was answering to this your statement:

BTW my use of foursome did not mean to imply all four Gospels. It was more meant "our Gospels", not some other hypothetical Gospels that hypothetically have been lost.

Justin quoting from Marcion's gospel and the Gospel of James means that it's not "our" gospels only but some other sources he's using. Whether that includes texts that resemble "our" gospels is unclear, but your example definitely looks like something from "Mark"'s text. He's is definitely also using other "gospels" that are not ours.

Justin only uses the statement "in the Gospel it is written" once. And this one time, he quotes from Marcion's Gospel. What you refer to is indirect, as in all other cases her refers to "memoirs". Or in other words: nobody knows what kind of text(s) Justin used. From single sentences, it's hard to reconstruct whole texts.

It is at least perplexing that the only time he actually refers to something written in "the Gospel", it is Marcion's gospel. The best explanation is that he had Marcion's NT, which consisted of "The Gospel", "The Apostle" and the Antitheses (maybe), which means that during his time, there may have been only one text that actually bore the "official" title "The Gospel". There may have been other texts which he refers to as "memoirs", and maybe calling those "gospels" was a newfangled thing during Justin's time, mimicking Marcion's example.

While Marcion being the first to collect something like an NT is pretty much standard scholarship nowadays, there are obviously other possibilities, like the idea of a single "diatessaronic" (in a sloppy sense) text, plus some other sources.

Summary: We can safely conclude that the assumption that Justin was using "our" gospels and not any other lost gospels is false. You can propose he used both, although such a proposal cannot be proven. It is however sure that he used non-canonical texts.

[Giuseppe]

If I understand well, Justin meant Mcn as the ''gospel'' but he used our gospels, too (or an 'harmony' of them).

Since you have read what our Savior taught, as you have yourself acknowledged, I think I have not acted in an unseemly fashion by adding short sayings of his [Christ's] to those found in the Prophets.

For Justin and his audience the Prophets are of undisputed authority, but not so the 'sayings' of Christ, even if Justin in the Dialogue claims that 'God's voice has spoken through the apostles of Christ, and were preached to us through the Prophets', as if the Apostles and the Prophets stood 'on a par'.
On the evidence of the list of references that Justin gives with regard to Jesus' life, he must have been acquainted not only with Marcion's Gospel, but also with those aemulationes that existed according to Marcion, as we will be below, perhaps in a harmonized version of them. Is it a surprise that the only occasion when Justin uses the noun 'Gospel' (euaggelion) is in his report about the eucharist, when Marcion had picked up Paul quoting the Lord's saying about the 'new covenant' as one of the core passages of his theology? Charles E. Hill seems correct in his opinion that Justin in his First Apology must also have had knowledge of Johannine material (if not of John) with his Logostheology, especially given that he not only alludes to oracles of the Lord, but also knows of Nicodemus' statement from John 3:4 and perhaps of the Baptist's denial 'I am not the Christ' (John 1:20-3). However, Hill also admits that Justin himself gives as his source not John, but the Memoirs of the Apostles. Even if th only known writing which could possibly have provided him [Justin] with this kind of information about the pre-existence of Jesus as ''only-begotten'' of the Father is the Gospel according to John', the reference Justin gives us is to a work entitled the Memoirs, albeit he claims these Memoirs were written by Jesus' Apostles and their followers (Dial. 103.8). Of course, this could be a hint that he regarded John as one of the Memoirs, but because other quotes Justin gives from the Memoirs are never literally identical with any of the known Gospels, scholars still maintain that it is more likely he drew on, or himself put together, a Gospel harmony. According to Helmut Koester, the motivation and purpose of the composition of this harmony, 'a new gospel' in which 'the composer of this gospel [was] interested in strenghtening the ties to the prophecy of the Scriptures' is given in the following historical situation:

Justin knew Marcion... the first Christian theologian who called a writing that contains the words and deeds of Jesus a 'Gospel', and Justin must have learned this designation from Marcion. There is no evidence for the use of this designation before Marcion and Justin. It is not unlikely, then, that the harmony of Matthew and Luke, which Justin composed and/or used, was also produced in the context of the reaction to Marcion's work. While Marcion severed the thies between gospel and scripture, Justin's harmony wants to re-establish the close relationship between prophecy and fulfillment.

Only to some extent is Koester lending support to Hill's view that Justin had access to Gospels, as he strongly emphasizes the creation of a Gospel harmony. That Justin may have known the Gospels (including that of Marcion) does not surprise us, as Justin wrote to and against Marcion, hence must have been familiar with Marcion's own writings (including Paul's letters) and those written in response to him.

(Marcion and the dating, p. 31-32)


Vinzent writes also:

With each topic Justin wants to differentiate himself from Marcion, but, as I have shown in an earlier study, Justin also accepts many of his opponent's views. Just as Marcion had rejected the observance of 'days, months, seasons and years', so Justin rebuffs 'the Sabbath and in short all feasts' of the Jews. The above quote of Justin on Marcion continues:

For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten; and those who are unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted, and do now rivet, to things earthly, and to the works of their own hands; but those who devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine, they secretly beat back; and if they have not a wise sober-mindedness, and a pure and passionless life, they drive them into godlessness.

The seducer Marcion must have been an acknowledged and attractive philosopher and teacher. After Justin has complained that Marcion's followers even laugh at him and his students - which reveals that Justin and his pupils felt they had not taken seriously by Marcion and his school - he states that the seducer has used 'atheistical doctrines' to draw people away 'from God' the creator and his only-begotten Christ. When Justin mentions the people 'who are unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted', he hints at Marcion's core reference text in 2Cor. 12 where Paul is said to have been raised above the earth into the third heaven, met the risen Christ and heard the secret words of his Gospel. That Marcion enticed the same people, in Justin's words, 'to things earthly, and to the works of their own hands', can no longer mean that Marcion seduced his pupils by his doctrines and arguments alone, but presuppones that Marcon had produced something by his own hands, works of an earthly nature. As this information is the contrasting explanation to Paul's heavenly Gospel, it can only mean that Marcion had seduced the pupils by a Gospel, produced by his 'own hands'. Consequently, Justin adds the note that Marcion's pupils 'beat back' those who 'devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine', by which he probably means not only the divine Logos himself, but also the Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets wich the divine Logos inspired.

(ibid., p. 35-36, my bold)

Basically, Justin is accusing Marcion to have invented the Gospel Jesus at a desk:

''...works of their own hands...''